


Christmas Is(n't) A Competition

by AsagiStilinski



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Accidents, Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Alternate Universe- Werewolves are still a thing, Christmas, Christmas Decorating, Fluff, Hurt Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Misunderstandings, Neighbors, decorating wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-13 12:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12984027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsagiStilinski/pseuds/AsagiStilinski
Summary: Stiles was not having a good month, first his best freind ropes him into being an elf at the mall, then he gets into a Christmas decorating war with his neighbor, and THEN he finds out that the gorgeous mall Santa he works with is his aforementioned neighbor who he's been unintentionally spilling decorating secrets to! (And we haven't even gotten to the broken arm yet)





	Christmas Is(n't) A Competition

**Author's Note:**

> Another peice down for 12 Days Of Sterek! I always thought mall-Santa!Derek would be cute, and I love the idea of Stiles being one of those people who competes with his neighbors in decorating for Christmas

Stiles often wondered exactly how the hell Scott managed to drag him into situations like this

How exactly had he ended up playing one of Santa's elves at he mall's "Meet Santa" thing in the first place?

The last thing he remembered was Scott being his usual self wile they were having some Chinese food a few weeks ago, he had off-handedly wondered if Stiles could use some extra cash- wich he DEFINITELY could, being a witch-for-hire wasn't exactly a millionaire's job even on ad day- and Stiles saying that he could

Now here he was in a stupid elf costume, handing out candy canes and taking pictures as kids came up to -usually- get a good look at Santa and run screaming

Stiles didn't see what the problem was, their current Santa was cute!

Granted, Stiles didn't know what he looked like under the beard, but to be fair neither had the kids

Oh well, atleast the money was decent and he wouldn't have to deal with this for very much longer

And it was only for a matter of hours every day, he could survive that ... for the most part... and then it would be right back to his regularly scheduled life, back to working on his spells and getting ready for Christmas- wich included more decorating

Sure his house was already pretty covered in lights and decorations, but he wasn't done just yet, he had alot more that he could do and he was DEFINITELY going to do it

Why?

Because he was determined not to let the guy across the street win, that's why

Stiles had a reputation to uphold as the best decorator in the neighborhood, he had beat the house nextdoor at Halloween- probably because they had just moved in and hadn't had much time to decorate but still, it counted- and he was going to beat them this time too

It wasn't that Stiles was necessarily _competitive_ , more that it felt like the guy nextdoor was _challenging_ him- and Stiles Stilinski did NOT give up on a challenge

Everytime Stiles put up a string of lights, the house nextdoor put up two

When Stiles put out a "Santa stop here!" sign at the end of his driveway, the house nextdoor put out a bigger one

And after Stiles put out a set of light up, moving reindeer, the house nextdoor put out a set of light up, moving reindeer _with music_

At first Stiles just thought it was a coincidence, but the deer were really the last straw

Oh well, it didn't matter right now

Right now Stiles was just about to get off work and go buy some more lights

He'd show that Derek Hale yet!

 

~+~

 

"Oh man what a day.... are you sure you're ok man? I mean it looked like that kid bit you pretty hard," Stiles groaned, rolling his shoulders as he started for the door

"I'm fine," Santa replied easily, not seeming at all bothered by the day's activities, even though he had been sneezed on, peed on, bitten, poked in the eye, screamed at, and had put up with countless crying children over the last twelve hours

And let's not forget the enormous amount of children who had sat on him today

Really, Stiles was shocked that his legs weren't numb

But this Santa seemed to be a trooper

They'd been working together for a few weeks now and he never had anything but the BEST attitude around kids, and was quiet and soft-spoken when they were alone

Honestly, Stiles couldn't have asked for a better co-worker

"Jeez.... you have the patience of a saint...."

"Just grew up around alot of kids," Santa shrugged back

"Oh? Do you have like... a ton of siblings or something?"

"Just two sisters, I had alot of extended family,"

"Ohhh..."

... Wait....

 _Had_?

"I'll see you tommorrow, I have to get home," Santa said suddenly, jarring Stiles out of the question he had wanted to ask

"O-Oh uh... yeah, yeah ofcourse, I have to get going anyway, gotta pick up some more lights for my house before Home Depot closes," he winked

Santa only nodded politely before walking towards the opposite end of the mall, even though the bathroom they usually changed in was right there

....

Huh

Maybe he had something he had to do first?

Ofcourse, Stiles wasn't sure what that would be that he couldn't change first but.... you never know with people, and it wasn't really his place to speculate

(Not to say that he wouldn't, but, you know, maybe he'd just go home first)

 

~+~

 

" _Ughhhhhh_ I HATE this guy!"

Derek Hale was now hanging MORE lights, and Stiles hadn't even gotten his unpackaged yet!

"Stiles, is it possible that maybe you two aren't actually competing, and he just wants a really decorated house like you do?"

"No, Scott, that is NOT possible, it's too big of a coincidence, he KNEW I was buying more lights today so he bought more too!"

He didn't care if it sounded like a conspiracy theory, it was TRUE

The coincidences just couldn't keep stacking up like this!

"I'm just saying, don't put too much energy into it,"

Ofcourse Scott would say that, Scott didn't care about decorating hardly at all

He liked the basics- a tree, a wreath, maybe a few strings of lights, but he didn't care about the winter wonderland Stiles was trying to create

He wasn't very enthusiastic about Halloween either, so Stiles just chalked it up to his roommate not being much of a decorator

"You're still going to help me hang these right?"

Scott heaved a long, loud sigh, and Stiles took that to mean "Yes"

 

~+~

 

Sometimes Stiles just felt... drained

Besides the aches and the migraines and the frustrations, one of the biggest problems with this particular gig was the sheer draining exhaustion that came with it

It was currently everything Stiles could do to keep the kids in line somewhat settled as he handed out candy canes, envying the elf who got to focus, instead, on just taking the pictures

She had the least hair-raising job of them all

"Ok, who's next to see Santa?"

Probably the hardest part of this job was keeping himself cheery- overly, almost cartoonishly cheery

His cheeks hurt

His eyes were watering

He was about to fall over

But he was going to be the best elf that he could be or die trying

(And he might just)

"And what's this little cutie's name?"

He had to ask, it was policey, even though he was alot more concerned with the fact that the woman in line had just handed him a two-hundred-pound baby

(Atleast it FELT like the kid weighed two hundred pounds, bye arms, it was nice knowing you)

"Brennan," the mother answered almost curtly- not that Stiles could really blame her, she had been waiting in line for who knew how long now

"Oooook, well we're gonna get Brennan here all settled on Santa's lap and get that picture,"

If his arms didn't break off first...

He was practically holding his breath to keep from groaning as he headed over to Santa and, wispering a "Sorry buddy", set the kid on his lap

Santa looked mildly startled, but he didn't even huff- Stiles was impressed by that

"Ho ho ho, how are you today Brennan?" Santa chortled

The child, who couldn't have been older than six or seven months, stared at Santa the way Stiles would probably stare at a three-headed alien, and then, without any warning, the kid reached up and yanked on Santa's beard as hard as he could, successfully pulling it off

"Uh.. everyone look!! Reindeer!" Stiles shouted, pointing off somewhere in the opposite direction and snapping his fingers behind his back, thus creating the illusion of a reindeer running off and disappointing inside an elevator

It gave Santa just enough time to pull his beard back on, though... not before Stiles caught a glimpse of what was beneath it

An incredibly dark, thick beard- a real one- that, unlike Santa's, wasn't long at all, but was certainly thick enough...

Stiles recognized that beard

That was the beard belonging to _Derek Hale_

....

_What the fu-_

 

~+~

 

"That's how!! THAT'S how Scott!! That's how he was always one step ahead of me with the lights, I TOLD him like.... six times when I was gonna buy more, what my plans were, what I was doing.... this is how he knew! He's been spying on me!!"

"Stiles do you really think this guy took a job as Santa just so he could spy on you and win what I can only LOOSELY call a competition with Christmas lights against you?"

"No," Stiles reasoned

"But it's a spectacular coincidence that he ended up there and he used it to his advantage,"

"Stiles," Scott said gently, setting a hand on his roommate's shoulder and squeezing softly

"I mean this in the BEST of ways... but I think you're paranoid,"

"I am not PARANOID Scott McCall," Stiles insisted with a huff

"I was not paranoid when I said you were turning into a werewolf, I was not paranoid when I said Jackson was a lizard-person, I was not paranoid when I said I was hitting magical puberty, need I go on? WHY would I be paranoid now?"

"To be fair, you also thought you were going to get a letter from Hogwarts," Scott pointed out a second later

"Ok no, I said I HOPED for a Hogwarts letter, I HOPED, not that I thought I was going to get one," Stiles insisted a second later

Scott only smiled and gently patted him on the shoulder, rising to his feet and heading for the door

"Whatever you say,"

Stiles narrowed his eyes, nose wrinkling

"And where are you going this late?"

Ofcourse "late" was a subjective term, it was barely after ten

"I have a date with Kira, didn't I tell you?"

"No, but that's fine, I'll just eat aaaaaaall the pizza I ordered myself,"

Scott just smiled, giving him a thumb's up and grabbing his jacket before ducking outside

It was fine, seriously

Stiles could hang the rest of the lights himself, no big deal

This wasn't the first time that Scott forgot to tell him about a date and it would surely not be the last, so he was used to it

He got up from the couch, heading over to where he had brought in the new lights, and grabbed the box before moving to get his jacket and boots

He could hang these by himself, no problem

 

~+~

 

Incidentally, he couldn't hang those lights by himself after all- BIG problem

He had been on the roof for probably twenty.... maybe thirty minutes, and all had been going pretty well

That is, until his foot happened to get tangled in the string of lights and he ended up falling off the roof, landing on his _arm_ of all freaking things, and with the lights coming right along with him

Because ofcourse it hadn't been the string he had gotten mostly hung at that point, no, it was the NEW string he hadn't even gotten started on yet

He groaned miserably, letting out a pained breath and feeling tears sting at the corners of his eyes

God....

God it hurt

It hurt so badly he couldn't even put it into words

And he had left his phone inside because he didn't want to risk dropping it or it falling out of his pocket....

He was alone out here, and no one knew where he was

"Stiles!?"

He jerked his head up, jaw going slightly slack in shock as he stared across the street at his neighbor

Why the hell was Derek calling to him?

"Stiles!? Can you hear me!?" he shouted, rushing towards the fallen witch

Why....?

"Y-Yeah!" Stiles huffed back, taking another shaking breath

"I-I hear you!!"

Not that it seemed to matter much though, Derek was already stomping towards him and reaching out as if trying to pick him up

"Are you ok? Are you hurt?"

Well that was.... unexpected

Sure Derek had always been nice to him at work and all, but Stiles had just assumed that was because he was trying to keep his identity a secret

Now that they were home and back to their ways of rivalry why should he care?

He had never shown Stiles any other signs of giving a crap before so why start now?

But Stiles didn't have time to contemplate or argue about it, his arm was killing him and it could quite easily be broken, he needed to get to a hospital

"I... my arm.... killing ... me...."

Derek didn't waste a second, scooping him up gently and cradling Stiles close his chest as he ran off towards his own driveway

Amidst the agony, there was alot of confusion

Where was Derek taking him?

Why was Derek helping him?

How did Derek smell so good after being outside hanging up lights and working up a sweat for an hour?

Well, he'd atleast get the answer to ONE of those questions soon.... he hoped....

 

~+~

 

Stiles never expected the E.R. to be this crowded on a random Thursday night, a week before Christmas

And yet, here they were, having been waiting for close to an hour, with no sign of being called anywhere near the word "next"

The papperwork had been filled out- curtousy of Derek, shockingly enough, who wrote down all of the answers Stiles provided- and now they were sitting in silence

Stiles couldn't speak for Derek, but he, for one, was bored out of his _mind_

Just as he was about to strike up some small talk though, Derek- surprisingly- beat him to the punch

"Can't witches heal?"

Stiles snapped his head around so fast he could have easily given himself wiplash

"What?"

"Witches, can't you heal?"

"How did you-"

"I'm a werewolf, plus.... the reindeer thing from earlier, I thought you knew,"

"No.... no I definitely didn't know," he nearly squeaked, clearing his throat and leaning back a little more in his hospital chair

"Witches do heal yeah, but it's alot slower than werewolves and I need to know if it's actually broken or not so I know what kind of herbs to blend and drink later, for an extra boost to my healing as well as the pain,"

Derek nodded slowly, glancing at the floor and going quiet again

"Ok, now it's my turn to ask a question- why did you help me? I mean aren't we enemies? Don't you hate me?"

The wolf looked up slowly, quirking an eyebrow and tilting his head

"First of all, even if we _were_ 'enemies', I would never be so horrible that I'd just leave you laying there with a broken arm- or any kind of injury, what kind of person do you think I am?"

Ok, ok...

That was a fair point

He DID play Santa Claus after all....

"Second of all, I'M not the one in competition with you, my sisters are,"

"But there IS a competition! I knew it!"

"Ofcourse there's a competition, did you think it was a coincidence that everytime you added decorations we added twice as much?"

No, but he'd be sure to tell Scott later that Derek said that

"And you WERE spying on me at work,"

"Is it really considered 'spying' if you willingly volunteer all the information though...?"

"I knew it," Stiles grumbled

"But I'm not the one who's doing all of this, I'm just the.... helper monkey who hangs everything on the roof, so I'm not.... I don't have anything against you, Stiles, and my sisters don't have anything against you PERSONALLY, they just wish you'd let them win before our house gets tacky,"

Stiles squinted, nose wrinkling

"Ok first, I think you passed 'tacky' like four reindeer ago, and second of all, why the hell does it matter so much that they have the most decorated house?"

"I could ask you the same question,"

Ok, that was _also_ a fair point

"I asked you first,"

Way to go Stiles, keepin' it classy

"Well, Laura always wants to have the best house in the neighborhood because growing up we always had the most decorated house, my mom always liked Christmas but she wanted to do everything even more specially because of my birthday, Cora is just competitive,"

Because of his ... birth....?

"You're a Christmas baby?"

"Unfortunately,"

Stiles tightened his lips, nose wrinkling again

"... Now my reason just sounds petty....."

"It's ALL petty in my opinion, and just so you know, the only reason I was 'spying', was because I knew the moment my sisters saw your new decorations they'd send me out to get more, and I REALLY would prefer not to have to keep going out in the middle of the night days before Christmas to get more lights and animated decorations,"

And again- a fair point

"Yeah I... I can't exactly blame you for that one...."

"After tonight though I'm going to tell them I quit, if they want to torture themselves trying to compete with you then they can leave me out of it, it's reached FAR beyond the level of stupid at this point, and besides, I really don't want to feel guilty over your decoration related demise,"

Stiles just snorted, rolling his eyes

"Oh please, it'll take alot more than just falling off the roof to take me out,"

"Are you sure?" Derek smirked smugly

"More than sure," Stiles snorted back teasingly, leaning a little bit closer

"I don't know, you seem pretty accident prone, wasn't it just a few days ago that you fell trying to pick up that kid's candy cane and banged your head on one of the poles holding the ropes up?" Derek teased back

Well....

He wasn't _wrong_....

"Come ON," he snorted back, eyes rolling playfully

"I had ONE incident, I'm not THAT bad,"

"You are a WALKING incident," Derek insisted

"Ok, so what do you want to do then? Babysit me? Watch my every move? Guard me every moment of every day and never leave my side?"

"Maybe,"

Apparently, given the shell shocked look on Derek's face, he hadn't meant to say that out loud

".... So, what's with the Santa thing? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think your family really needs the money,"

He didn't know what the Hales really DID, but they didn't seem to have any issues with money, if the brand new Camaro in the driveway spoke to that at all, not to mention the house, the other cars, and everything else Stiles had observed....

"It's a family tradition of sorts, every year we volunteer somewhere over the holidays, Cora does the food drive, Laura helps with Toys For Tots, and I do the Santa thing and use the money to buy toys for the charity,"

"Wow..."

That was kind of all Stiles could even say to that

Derek just shrugged though, like it was no big deal, like it was just any other thing any other person would TOTALLY do- yeah right

"And you? You don't really seem like the elf type,"

"Ah... my buddy Scott roped me into it, his girlfreind Kira is actually our photographer, they needed to find an elf and... well, long story short, here I am, not exactly the good person of the year or anything but whatever,"

"Don't sell yourself short, you're still doing a nice thing for someone, and believe me, I have alot more respect for you as an elf than I do for Santas, the elves are the ones who take all the beatings,"

"Yeah but we don't get sat on- though... I guess the werewolf thing explains your endurance...."

"Pretty much," Derek teased back

Things went quiet for another moment, just for a second, before Stiles spoke again

"So.... let me get a few things straight, you don't hate me, you're a big soft teddy bear with a heart of gold, we're neighbors, we work together... I feel like we should be freinds, am I missing anything here?"

"Just one problem, you want to get everything straight? I'm not,"

Stiles' eyes lit up, grinning wickedly and moving a little bit closer

"Oh my God.... you're everything I said before, you're not straight, and you have the smoothest gay puns EVER, uh.... gay right?"

"Close- bi,"

"See, now, as a fellow bi, I should have known that,"

"Oh really? I was unaware that suddenly being bi came with psychic powers,"

"Mmm you must not have been doing this long enough, we DEFINITELY have some special gifts,"

"Such as?"

This was it- this was his chance

Derek Hale, the adorable Santa he had been working with and mildly crushing on for weeks, was practically waiting for a kiss

He could do this, he could be smooth, he knew he could be

"I predict I'm about to give you goosebumps," he purred, finally closing the gap between them and letting his eyes slide shut as he pressed their lips together

Ok so the line could use some work but the kiss seemed pretty solid

Derek wasn't pulling away

As a matter of fact- he was kissing him right back

But just as Stiles was really starting to relax, the pain in his arm starting to fade to the background of his mind-

"Stiles Stilinski?"

And THAT would be the nurse...

"I swear she was just WAITING for this moment so she could do that,"

"I don't doubt it," Derek teased, standing up and very gently helping Stiles to his feet

"Come on, we can continue this when we leave ok?"

"Promise?"

Well that probably brought any smooth factor Stiles had going for him WAY down but he couldn't quite help that last one

Derek just smiled, wrapping an arm around his shoulders as they walked

"Promise,"

So they had their first kiss in the E.R. after Stiles fell off the roof and broke his arm wile trying to out-decorate Derek's sisters

That was definitely a story for the grandkids


End file.
